A Review on Moral Development, Multicultural Experiences and Conflict Handling Styles of Purchasing Professionals

Conflicts between the buyers and sellers are often inevitable during the progress of purchasing activities. It is essential to understand the conflict handling styles of purchasing professionals for those who want to build reciprocal buyer-supplier relationships. Nevertheless, only little attention was paid on the study of purchasing professionals’ conflict handling styles. While ethical purchasing is often considered essential in maintaining the relationships with suppliers, purchasing professionals’ moral development may influence their conflict handling. Furthermore, because of the growing numbers of global suppliers, purchasing professionals who are often exposed to multicultural occasions are expected to be capable to communicate and negotiate with their suppliers to prevent possible conflicts. There is no research analyzing the association between multicultural experiences, moral development and conflict handling styles of purchasing professionals. Accordingly, based on a review of related literature, this paper attempts to explore the impact of multicultural experiences and moral development on conflict handling styles of purchasing professionals, and provide some research suggestions. The findings of this paper can contribute to the research on conflict handling of purchasing professionals.